Aww, Bless Her Little Heart

I'm writing this as both children are having meltdowns in their rooms. Oh joy! They were starting to act up and get too many timeouts together while playing downstairs. They didn't nap today, so I'm attributing their current behavior to lack of sleep.

I was going to write about my new cooking ventures, but why not go ahead and post this photo of Anna having a little fit this morning; and Alexander telling her "It's OK. Don't cry." I can't even remember what she was crying about. That's how minor it was. (But I'll admit my short-term memory has been very short ever since we got the children. For about the first six or seven months with them there were many days where I'd ask myself sometime about mid-afternoon: "Did I brush my teeth yet today? I can't remember, but I dont' think I did.")

With the exception of this moment, Anna's behavior has been great both at home and school since she went back after Christmas. (Actually, her only fault now is that she's been crying for, oh, about 20 minutes or so strait because she doesn't want quiet playtime in her room. She's not even in timeout! Is that the behavior of a spoiled child? What is a spoiled child? If so, maybe this is one step to breaking that.) The week before they got out before the holiday break, she'd had some rough times. The teachers even wrote a note to send home! She'd chewed on some little Christmas tree-shaped erasers that they use as counting tools and had also scribbled on a little boy's paper. It was the impulsiveness they were concerned about, while acknowledging she's not even 3.5 years old yet (but said they would be worried about it if it continued into next year). They said they planned to pair her with a kindergarten student when they resumed in January so that she could learn appropriate behavior. But the teachers haven't done that yet because they said she's been great and came back to school ready to learn. I said to myself that I hope it lasts. I'm on pins and needles now all the time wondering what kind of report I'm going to get when I pick her up. Just for comparative purposes, I sometimes wonder if something like this would be a big deal if she went to a different school. I wonder if teachers demand more of students at her school. Please don't get me wrong: I'm very glad they expect a lot!

Lately, I've been letting her help me with a lot of things, especially in the kitchen. And I've noticed that she seems to act a lot more mature after getting such responsibilities. We even thought about seeing someone who can do role playing with her to help her learn more social skills. But I guess we'd only turn to that if the situation got really bad. And, like I said, she's been really wonderful lately, and she's such a joy to be around when she is really helpful and sweet and not crying. I probably sound really crazy right now, as I'm sure many children act this way or a lot worse. But when you get a note home from school....

Anyway, sounds like they're all cried out now so we'll have some happy times the rest of the afternoon.